Tribute to A Brave Patient, by Audrey Erbes

24 March, 2014, by ClinCaptureTeam

This week I want to pay tribute to John “Jay” Geddes Erbes who despite living a productive life filled with good diet and  exercise from all manner of sports passed as a result of malignant Stage IV glioblastoma for which our industry has found no cure. After five months of enduring an initial attempt to remove the aggressive tumor with a craniotomy and then receiving the highly toxic medications included in the guideline therapy for this aggressive cancer of the brain, he died of an apparent side effect from a biologic drug.

We were fortunate and grateful to have had the outstanding expertise and excellent patient care by the team of physicians and nurses at UCSF and the surgery performed by a Palo Alto Medical Foundation neurosurgeon trained at UCSF. El Camino Hospital in Mountain View was an outstanding center of surgical care as well as care of the families of the patients. We learned that those in our geographic area are truly blessed with outstanding medical access.

Jay was a valiant patient and never gave up. Our current healthcare expertise failed him and spurs me on to support investment in innovation in oncology. He carried around a cell phone with both a video of his winning a foot race in Olympia, Greece in July and an MRI film of his tumor only partially removed in August. He told folks that he had fulfilled his bucket list and got in his one final wish for a “jog” at Pismo Beach on the Central Coast on Jan. 14^th, when we experienced an unusually hot week prior to his sudden and unexpected death from a drug side effect. We need to continue the pursuit of more efficacious therapy with less adverse reactions.

Reposted from Audrey Erbes’ blog: Audrey’s Network

Audrey’s Network includes Bay Area bioscience professionals from all sectors who are working in broad array of functions in the industry. The group originated, first, with members sourced from Audrey’s UC Extension intensive courses in Bioscience Business and Marketing (now numbering over former 1,250 students), the Syntex Syva Alumni Association, the Bio2Device Group (now has over 1,000 members) and other industry professional groups and individuals with whom Audrey has worked. The mission is to assist industry professionals continue to keep up-to-date in their fields through “sharpening the saw” regularly and building and maintaining a vibrant network.